


With Me

by Catstaff



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Harmony & Co's Lyric Llama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:13:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25454470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catstaff/pseuds/Catstaff
Summary: Harry and Hermione find more than solutions while discussing the problem of Umbridge.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter
Comments: 5
Kudos: 132
Collections: Lyric Llama





	With Me

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the lyrics: “When you are with me, I'm free, I'm careless, I believe, Above all the others we'll fly, This brings tears to my eyes, My sacrifice” from My Sacrifice by Creed.

Harry stumbled through the portrait hole into a nearly empty common room just before curfew, his bleeding hand wrapped in his handkerchief. Hermione gently guided him to a seat at her usual out-of-the-way table and unwound his makeshift bandage before sticking his hand into a bowl of murtlap essence. He sighed in relief as the liquid soothed the pain.

“Thanks, Hermione,” he said softly.

“Anytime, Harry,” she replied just as softly. “Wasn’t Professor McGonagall able to do anything about this… this torture?”

Harry snorted. “Are you kidding me? She didn’t even let me tell her what Umbridge is doing to me before telling me to keep my head down and my mouth shut. Offered me a biscuit and said she couldn’t do anything because Umbridge is here on the Minister’s orders. I know you look up to her, but you’ve got to admit, however good she is as a teacher, she’s not so good as a Head of House. I can’t ever recall her standing up for any of us, can you? Malfoy walks over to our table in the Great Hall and starts insulting us, but she never even tells him to go back to his own table, let alone takes points away for his language. But if one of us even looks as if we’re reaching for a wand, Snape’s over in a heartbeat taking points and giving detentions.”

Hermione opened her mouth, paused, and sighed. “You’re right,” she said, chagrined to have to admit to her favourite teacher’s rather glaring flaws. “I don’t like it, but you’re right. I just…” She trailed off unhappily and moved over to sit close on Harry’s left.

He put his arm around her in a gesture of comfort. “It hurts, doesn’t it?” he said. “Getting it shoved in your face too many times that life isn’t fair, that no matter what you do or how well you do it, it doesn’t matter.”

“No,” Hermione said. “Somehow, some way, I’m going to make it matter.” She leaned her head on his shoulder, enjoying the closeness. “I’m going to resign as prefect,” she said after a few minutes.

“What?” Harry tried to keep his voice down, not wanting to draw attention to the two of them. “Why? You’ve wanted it for so long, I don’t understand why you’d let it go.”

“Because of you,” Hermione said. “Because you stand up for what’s right. You’ve always stood beside me, now I’m going to stand beside you.”

He felt absurdly warm inside with her words, but he still worried. “Are you sure? I know how much you academic standing means to you, and being a prefect is part of that.”

She nodded. “I’m sure. Besides, maybe without me doing all the work, Professor McGonagall might see what a poor choice Ron was for prefect. And if we’re really lucky, maybe she’ll finally see how bad things have gotten around here, if I’m stepping down as prefect. Besides, what’s happening to you and a few others just isn’t right. How can I accept authority granted by the school, when the school stands by and condones torture during detentions? Why shouldn’t I sacrifice my position when it does no good anyway?”

Harry dimly recalled something from a history lesson during his last year in primary that sounded something like what Hermione just said. “You mean like how they punished people at the Nuremburg Trials whose defense was that they were following orders?” he asked. “Because the orders themselves were against everything even remotely right and just.”

“Exactly!” Hermione gave him a huge smile before planting a kiss that should have landed on his cheek. Except he turned his head to look at her at the last second and it landed on his mouth instead. She blushed as she leaned back. “I… oh… erm…”

“Hey,” he said. “That was… nice. I know I’m not much, but you’re brilliant, you know. I’m not surprised Krum asked you to the Ball last year. I wish I’d managed to ask you first, to be honest. I still probably would have been pants at dancing, but at least I’d have been there with someone I like.”

She blinked, trying to sort through his words. “But… why… I thought you wanted to take Cho Chang?”

He shrugged a bit. “Well, she’s pretty and she plays quidditch, so she seemed like a good backup plan. I didn’t know she and Cedric were together. Anyway, I was just coming into the library to find and ask you when I heard you accepting Krum’s invitation. You never saw me there and I wasn’t going to be a prat about it, you know? If I’d had any sense at all, I’d have asked you to wait for me when McGonagall stopped me after she made the announcement, to tell me I had to have a date because I was a champion.” He grinned a bit, adding, “So really, it’s her fault I missed out on taking the girl I really wanted to go with.”

“Are you serious?” she asked.

“Sirius is my godfather,” he said, deadpan, then _oofed_ as she swatted his bicep. “Look, if you must know, I’ve fancied you since we rescued him at the end of third year. I just… I’m nothing special, you know? I mean, why would you bother with a runty, moody little git like me when you could have someone like Krum? I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to risk ruining our friendship when you turned me down.”

Her jaw dropped. “Wait… the most fanciable male in our year thinks **he’s** not good enough for **me**? And here I’ve been thinking you wouldn’t even consider me fanciable, since I’m just that bushy-haired know-it-all. A good study-buddy, but not a proper girl.”

Harry stared at her, hope fluttering wildly in his chest. “Does… does that mean what I think it does?”

“If you think it means we’ve both been idiots, then, yes,” she said. And then she very deliberately kissed him again.

When she pulled back this time, Harry had a goofy smile on his face. “Will you be my girlfriend?” he whispered.

“If you think I’d kiss anyone but my boyfriend like that, you’d be sadly mistaken,” Hermione assured him. “Yes.” She looked at his hand, which had stopped bleeding, although ‘I must not tell lies’ stood out clearly in red furrows on his skin. “You have detention tomorrow night as well, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he confirmed, used to her sudden topic changes. “Why?”

“Because I think I have a way to get them stopped.” She leaned closer, not wanting to risk being overheard even though they appeared to be alone in the common room, and softly said, “I know you like your privacy, but what we need to do is get it out to the public what’s going on in this school. I’m going to borrow Colin Creevy’s camera, or failing that, have him waiting down here with me tomorrow to take pictures of your hand. We’re going to send those pictures to every news outlet we can think of, along with a story about how a Ministry official is torturing students at Hogwarts and Harry Potter is one of her victims. In fact, we’ll send a copy to the DMLE as well. You said that Madam Bones seemed like one of the fair ones at that ridiculous trial you had to go to in summer, right? And she heads that department? Surely she’d have the authority to at least come here and see for herself what’s happening.”

Harry initiated the kiss this time. “Hermione, you are brilliant as well as beautiful and I still don’t get why you’d want me, but I’m grateful you do and I promise to try to live up to your good opinion of me.”

She blushed. “Thanks. I think maybe we bring out the best in each other? I know you bring out the best in me. When you’re around, it’s like I know you’ll have my back, so I can do anything, because you won’t let me fall. Not even if I was crazy enough to ride with you during a quidditch game,” she teased.

He laughed. “I wouldn’t do that to you,” he promised. “I do want to take you flying sometime, but my word on it, no crazy stunts. Erm, we probably ought to wait until Hogsmeade weekend to send out the pictures and story. Just in case anyone is screening the outgoing mail, you know?”

“Good thinking. See, I was right. We bring out the best in each other,” Hermione said. “When I’m with you, I know I can do anything that needs done, because you believe in me.” 

Harry smiled. “I feel the same way,” he said. “With you by my side, I can do anything, because you believe in me.”


End file.
